


we can be anything (even ourselves)

by toews



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: 5+1 Things, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Halloween, Idiots in Love, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Alternating, Time Skips, obviously, two kinds of people, two tones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:21:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26557312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toews/pseuds/toews
Summary: They hook up every Halloween and that's all it is... Until it isn't.
Relationships: Patrick Kane/Jonathan Toews
Comments: 16
Kudos: 131





	1. trick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [solizabeth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solizabeth/gifts).



> hi, i couldn't wait lmfaooo... have your team get kicked out and listen to DVD menu on repeat and here you'd be too!
> 
> This is a little different, but here it is :)
> 
> updated note: hi patrick's pov in chapter 2! happy spooky szn
> 
> here's a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6kmpjgIKKTqzW3OAXq5aA9?si=R1R8CvBJQpSOBANe-uALaw)

Sometimes, Jonny will wonder if it’s the date that brings out the worst in him. If the veil between here and the Otherworld really thins. If the paranormal is really stronger tonight of all nights. It would ease his mind a little... To know he’s actually as possessed as he feels. 

That’s the only way he can explain it when the lights are low, the music is deafening, and his eyes still find Patrick’s through the crowd of disguises like magnets. Every year he outdoes himself, he layers on his costume in hopes the look Patrick gives him will stop sitting on his skin like he’s wearing nothing at all. The one that says _I know it’s you._

_I know you._

_I know._

Tomorrow it’ll be normal. Tomorrow the memory is all he’ll have. It’ll stick in his mind like a dream—like a nightmare—while he hangs onto fragments of it trying to keep it alive, trying to remember if it happened at all. Tomorrow, it’ll be over again—but tonight? Tonight knows. And that look that Patrick gives him tells Jonny not to pretend he doesn’t. 

There _is_ a veil thinning, that much Jonny’s sure of. It’s slipping away and uncovering wicked truths that are better left hidden. He’d say he’s grasping at the edges of it to stall it, to stop it. He’d lie through clenched teeth, even as he’s snatching it away faster than it can fall.

But it’s a possession. 

It’s a dark, twisted, untamed feeling inside him to want Patrick this way. 

He knows.

**1.**

It starts feeling like the end. It’s crossing this invisible line he doesn’t even see until he’s on the other side. 

Rookie year finds them in haphazardly thrown together costumes. It’s nothing for them to recognize each other at the Punny Party they end up at. Patrick’s got bees taped to his knees, and Jonny’s wearing a party hat and has a dog drawn on his face.

“You? A party animal?” Patrick laughs when he sees him.

“Not exactly supposed to be ourselves, are we?” Jonny gives a deadpan, pointed look at his legs.

“Unless you’re normally someone else.” Patrick shrugs casually but the challenge charged in Patrick’s eyes is different, it’s potent like he’s highlighting something just as obvious.

Patrick’s bees end up unstable on the tile when he’s blowing Jonny in the bathroom. He skids a little, and it’s enough that he’s swallowing more down quickly, that he chokes on it. And the way he peers up at Jonny, with a diabolic gleam, Jonny doesn’t think it was an accident.

Jonny’s face paint ends up smeared on the palm of his hand, on Patrick’s face. He meant to cover his eyes, to pretend Patrick’s any of the hot girls at this party instead, but all he ends up doing is sliding his hand across his face — in a discerning disbelief that this is Patrick. He brushes his fingers along Patrick’s cheek, to thumb his lips — in an illicit realization that this is Patrick.

His party hat ends up on the floor forgotten, like him when Patrick walks out the door.

Party’s over.

He’s just an animal now.

**2.**

Jonny tries to chalk it up to being dumb, drunk, and lonely. He avoids the chilling knowledge that he hadn’t been drunk. That under the unforgiving fluorescent lights they’d both been distinctly sober. That he saw the browns peeking through the yellows of Patrick’s hair vividly clear in the grip of his fingers. That he can sometimes still hear the echo of Patrick’s moans like he heard around him that night, like he felt them echo into the chambers of his heart. That he feels them even now like they live there—like they died there.

It doesn’t matter. It’s just something that happened and doesn’t happen again. Jonny can’t ignore that he’s more unnerved by the latter. 

Sometimes, he’ll catch himself zoning out, contemplating another night with Patrick, contemplating getting him comfortable and taking his time. Even though he’ll remember where he is—who he is—and snap out of it, the possibility taunts him. The anticipation crawls over Jonny like clouds do for a storm, ominous but inevitable. The trees fall bare, the air nips at his nose and the wind whips the calendar closer to doomsday.

The guys start up about costumes and Jonny’s unable to focus on anything but being with Patrick again—not when it’s like molasses, flooding slow and thick over his mind and sticking. Jonny could say it’s going to be a full moon this year. He could say that’s why he plans to show up fully disguised as a werewolf. He could _at least_ mention the obscene amount he’s paying a makeup artist to do him up unrecognizable. 

Jonny doesn’t need to. 

The sky is clear. Nothing there to look at but the moon.

He finds Jonny. Nothing here to look at but him.

“What’re you thinking about?” Patrick whispers. There’s no one around, not on the roof, not when the air is a bitter warning of the crude winter to come. 

Jonny knows the whispering is an excuse to be this close, for body heat to burn him slow but sure. An excuse to drive Jonny to the edge from where he’ll fall, for the sinister curve of Patrick’s lips to suggest maybe he’d fly.

“What you’re thinking about,” it conjures out of him. He’s close enough to see those lips tremble, too.

It’s a bitter warning of its own.

**3.**

Sometimes, Patrick will sweep over him like a ghost, fleeting but tangible at the same time. The jarring feeling of knowing he’s not alone will settle over Jonny, and he’ll go searching to make sure he is—or isn’t—while Patrick creeps in tight over Jonny’s heart and latches on to stay. Tonight, Jonny doesn’t even have to go searching, not really. As always, Patrick moves him like a planchette on an ouija board. 

Jonny’s ribs cage his violent heart as it drives into the sharp knives of bone, ready to sliver itself because it’s just that desperate to end this, to escape it—or maybe, it’s just that desperate to get to Patrick, to return home. Sometimes, he feels like he wouldn’t be able to breathe if not for the breaths he shares with Patrick. 

The trees are shaking outside, creating warped shadows on them in the lowlight, but he couldn’t unsee this for what it is if he tried. Sometimes, when the wind howls especially harsh, the branches will scrape the glass; a shrieking, screaming thing that sounds like an eerie soundtrack to the havoc in Jonny’s chest. 

In the moonlight like this, Patrick’s hair glows almost like a halo. And when he sings praises into Jonny’s skin, when he makes Jonny feel this divine, it figures his iridescence would distort from ghost to angel. 

**4.**

November will come and Jonny will feel changed and it’ll change nothing. 

He harbours an intense guilt about the lack thereof that he can’t begin to contain, can’t wrap his mind around. This disgraceful truth at the core of him grows rancid and Jonny turns sick with it. 

He’ll have nightmares about it. They’ll be so vivid, he can feel Patrick’s hands on him. So real, he can taste Patrick’s strawberry chapstick on his tongue. Sometimes, it’s like Patrick’s eyes aren’t blue at all, when they look as dark as Jonny’s own—like a black hole Jonny can’t escape. And there’s nothing he could do to stop this. There's nothing anyone could do. 

It’ll come to him when he leasts expects it, but there’s nothing like the real thing. Nothing like seeing Patrick so close, _so close,_ his vision blurs. So close, it’s all Jonny can focus on. So close, there’s nothing but this. 

He lays awake wondering if Patrick’s the one possessed. That Patrick can make him feel this ethereal and fade away into the night, haunts him. 

Sometimes, Jonny wonders if Patrick himself is the one possessing him.

*

Sometimes, it’s a twitch of lips. Sometimes, it’s a nudge of the shoulder. Sometimes— _most times_ —it’s a look. It’s _the_ look. The one that dares Jonny tonight of all nights, if he’s going to be someone out of the ordinary, to be himself. 

He glances and catches Patrick’s paralyzing, clairvoyant eyes. Jonny’s been here before. Sometimes it feels like he never leaves, that he lives in this threatening limbo. 

_What will this do to him?_

_What will this do to them?_

_What will this do to the team?_

Consequences hang heavy in the air, interspersed with his nefarious want. It feels daunting, like looking will make it crash down and end everything. 

Jonny stares.

*

“Always so red here,” Patrick muses, brushing his fingers over the cavern of Jonny’s neck, right above his sternum. Jonny knows there’s blood pooling there, because it’s where the denials die in his throat; the ones that should prevent this. Patrick’s presses down the barest amount, suffocating any fear that even they wouldn’t.

 _How could he? How could he want something so wretched, so impure?_

Patrick will get him alone. He’ll inhale the life out of Jonny. He’ll absorb the heat out of his essence. Jonny will press his palm up to Patrick’s chest, to feel the beat of his own heart there, and the carnality will erode Jonny’s skin until it’s raw—until he’s _renewed,_ until he cries out in frustration—in hysteria. 

_How couldn’t he? When this is who he is?_

Patrick looks at him like he knows all these things are on the tip of his tongue. He kisses Jonny curling them into his own, pulling pieces of Jonny into himself until all Jonny tastes is this and them and the truth. 

The shame comes then. It always does at the worst time. 

**5.**

Last time was— 

If there’s one thing they don’t do, it’s get drunk. Every time, it’s been the irresistible significance of their taboo ritual: this is them being _true_. When Jonny tastes the alcohol on Patrick’s tongue he doesn’t know what it means.

There was an anxious edge to them that wasn’t coming from Jonny for once. Where he was usually a force to be reckoned with, daring Jonny to back down, Patrick felt flimsy under his touch. 

He clung to Jonny afterward. Awake. It’s been years and Jonny can’t recall a single time he’s had Patrick in his arms like this. What’s more worrisome is the way he’s trembling.

Last time, Jonny could feel something breaking. 

He could hear it in Patrick’s voice when it turned tinny and unsure, like he never was when they did this. When he carved secrets like “Don’t go,” onto Jonny's collarbone and “Love this” into his chest and then caved in on himself like he had nothing left. 

The words light Jonny from the inside out, illuminating through his open wounds like a jack-o-lantern. Then it was just _love_ and _this_ glowing between them against the cacophony of sirens on the street. 

When morning comes, Jonny’s alone. Feeling like he’s half disappeared, like he’s not entirely there himself, he thinks maybe it’s him who’s the ghost. The ghost of this.

**\+ 1**

October looms closer, and it brings a fog of turmoil with it. Jonny can’t begin to explain the disturbia jittering over him. Sometimes, Patrick catches him like this, when he’s loopy and unsettled from it. He’ll tilt his head, playfully evasive. He’ll blink at Jonny, languidly unbothered. He’ll grin open, illusory. 

Jonny’s never felt so unsound, and for the first time, he’s just desperate for an answer or an explanation. He’s almost crazed enough to beg Patrick to tell him what this even is anymore.

No luck, but it’s only September. They’re on the bus full of the team, but soon their compulsion will pull them together. He grinds the words down with his teeth and swallows down the nausea they provoke.

*

Maybe he should’ve seen it coming, when the shredded strands of the veil finally fall. 

“Gonna be the only one without a date, Toes. Just bring someone.”

“Maybe I’ll bring Kaner.” Jonny jokes. It’s jeopardizing to say something almost true, even if Sharpy wouldn’t know it, but he can’t stop himself. It’s so close he can already taste Patrick on his tongue, so close he’s the only thing in his mouth.

“I said you’ll be the only one.”

“What?” Jonny snaps out of his stupor, turns to blink at Sharpy, to blink past him to Patrick laughing along the boards, ahead of them. 

He should’ve realized, but it’s a tale as old as them: the closer they get to each other the further they get from their senses. So Jonny can’t be blamed for paying attention to anything but them, when all he knows is narrowed down to how he’ll have Patrick again.

“Peeksy's in love.” 

Sometimes, Jonny’s hands will shake with suspense, like they’re remembering what it’s like to be on Patrick again. That must be why they do now, so he grips his stick harder and looks back at Sharpy. 

“Bet you he brings a girl.” Sharpy has no idea what he’s doing, what he’s ruining—what he’s saving? Isn’t this what Jonny wanted? To be rescued from Patrick, from the devil inside him?

“If you didn’t bail on Saader’s birthday, you would’ve seen him drunk cry about it last night.” Jonny wants to know if it’s anything like the love confession Jonny still carries on his skin like a brand, but his mouth runs dry, his skin feels tight and he can’t do anything but blink. 

It feels yellow, like the sunshine and the falling leaves; like living and dying all at once. 

He’s holding his breath, doesn’t even realize it until Sharpy’s mischievous look falls flat. Jonny’s letting out a shaky, long breath. He inhales just as slowly, just as controlled —just to control _something_. Sharpy tries to reassure him it’s okay if he’s alone, that he was just giving him shit, like that's what Jonny’s on the verge of mania for. 

Jonny nods at him in agreement, finds reprieve in rushing out for his turn on the drill, in the burning in his lungs having nothing to do with Patrick for once.

*

It’s at the cusp of when night becomes morning, when it’s yours to decide what it is, that Jonny opens his door to Patrick. He looks unhinged, frantic, like—like the day of reckoning. He stands there like he’s waiting for something, like this is another test, another thing to decide if he’ll punish. It feels like he already is when Jonny’s hands flex with the painful ache to touch him.

“What are you doing?” Patrick pushes Jonny aside to storm into his dark apartment when he doesn’t answer. Patrick’s jerking his head around suspiciously, taking in the mess of Jonny’s couch and blanket, the Netflix screensaver on his tv. He gives Jonny a hard, searching look before he’s off down Jonny’s unlit hall to his bedroom, like he’s still expecting to find something incriminating.

“Patrick.” Jonny hisses in disbelief. He’s half certain this is another one of his nightmares, that he’s still asleep on his couch wishing for Patrick.

“Where were you?” Jonny hears before he sees Patrick appear out of the darkness. 

“What?” Jonny almost doesn’t know what he’s talking about, still catching up to consciousness. 

“Jonny.” Patrick implores. With Patrick standing before him in normal loungewear, he almost doesn’t remember it’s Halloween. When he does—when he remembers why he’s home—it feels like finding out again the first time.

“Where were you?” He asks again.

“Sharpy said you’re in love.” Jonny explains, helplessly, with a ruthless honesty tied to tonight. That only seems to make Patrick’s tension palpable, hurtling Jonny seconds from his own breaking point. 

“I waited for you all night.” Patrick says, like the words are clawing themselves out of his throat. Jonny can’t tell if he’s imagining how his voice shakes, but it moves him all the same. He steps closer, caging Patrick in, but the more he cages Patrick in the tamer he gets. When Jonny reaches out to touch him, he relaxes. 

“For _you._ ” He repeats and this time the conviction is unmistakable. He looks up at Jonny with open, unfiltered eyes. 

He leans in and right now feels more like morning when Patrick’s eyes flutter shut, when he meets his mouth delicately, and it tastes like daylight. Jonny decides _this_ is morning. This is November and this will be every day after that.

Patrick abruptly yawns into Jonny’s mouth. The knowledge that there’s no rush makes him say “Stay.” 

He can feel the shadow of hesitancy on Patrick, so he looks at Patrick with tender reverence and says, “Love this.”

The slow, easy joy that spreads over Patrick’s face feels like a blessing.

They’re calm and unhurried as they undress and fall into bed trading soft kisses that feel like gliding. When Patrick presses his skin to Jonny’s, there’s none of the urgent undertow that usually drenched them. Instead, there’s a gentle peace that purrs between them.

*

“Fuck!” Jonny jerks awake, yanking his legs away from the cold shock that woke him up. When his eyes search for the cause, he’s met with Patrick’s affectionate grin.

“It’s cold, Jonny.” Patrick blinks back innocently. 

“Not exactly dressed for warmth,” Jonny chides.

Patrick pouts and hops out to do just that. 

Jonny watches Patrick collect the normal clothes he wore here, curiously. “Didn’t dress up?”

Patrick’s head pops through the top of his shirt and he smiles, this soft, demure thing Jonny can’t believe he gets to keep. 

“I did.” He crawls back under the covers, and hides his face in Jonny’s neck.

“What the hell are you supposed to be?” 

“I’m supposed to be yours.” Patrick whispers into the top of his sternum like a sacred verse and it hangs there like an amulet. 

Jonny angles Patrick’s head for a kiss, for a chance to worship him for the honor. Jonny won’t even say it feels like he’s in heaven, because he wouldn’t want to be. How could there be anything better than this?

In the light of sunrise, Jonny’s sure Patrick’s eyes are the blue of oceans in Paradise. Heaven’s right here with him.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> songs I listened to while writing:  
> [dvd menu](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3CYZ0zCY6M)  
> [halloween](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVZTMyQ3SsU&ab_channel=PhoebeBridgers-Topic)  
> [daddy issues](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5VBKvjZnXs)


	2. treat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patrick POV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this au lives rent free in my head lmao so here this is

Patrick can’t see a thing. The water is murky, dark and unforgiving. He can’t tell, can’t even guess how deep it goes. 

He dives in.

**1.**

“Unless you’re normally someone else.” 

He’s not thinking when he says it, it slips out of his lips faster than he can catch them. It’s with a shrug, with knowing eyes, because it’s what they’re both thinking, because that’s exactly how Jonny is. It’s the look of momentary shock that tells Patrick he didn’t just think it, that the sentiment was so strong he said it too. 

He can’t take it back. He doesn’t want to. 

“Jonny.” Patrick’s unsure why he reaches out a hand, maybe to explain or to try to, but he’s batted away. Jonny looks at him with open, pliant eyes, like now that Patrick’s seen this part of him he’ll show everything else. Patrick wants to feel this on his skin forever. He wants to stand here and marinate in it, until he can replicate this feeling for the rest of his life. Jonny’s looking at him with such a raw, trusting, desire that Patrick knows, reaching out his hand again, that Jonny will hold it tight into his own. 

He does. Like a lifeline.

All he’s ever wanted to be for Jonny is _good_. He’s never considered he’d get to do it all the ways he’s wanted to, too. But when he’s there on his knees, gripping Jonny’s thighs for stability, Patrick tries to find a name for the feeling it gives him to please him like this. 

It feels like playing, and laughing, and when Jonny says his name with an awe he’s never heard before Patrick recognizes this as joy. It’s a distinct satisfaction he never allowed himself to consider he could have. The sounds that pull out of Patrick when Jonny sinks his fingers into his hair make him feel as gentle as a harp, they bounce off the walls as graceful as a hymn. 

When Jonny comes it’s with a cry that sounds like it was wretched from him, falling harsh on Patrick’s ears. It snaps Patrick out of his daze and he feels like he’s stolen something from Jonny. 

He leaves then, because he’s too selfish to give it back. 

**2.**

It's hard to know what it’s like, to have felt the soft pad of Jonny’s fingers across his cheekbone like a feather, and bear the crushing weight of nothingness afterwards. He waits, and he wants, and he waits, and he wants for Jonny to say something, to say anything and he never does.

The timidness, the apprehension, the nerves—even the anger—that Patrick steels himself for never comes. The longer he waits, the only way he can accept that nothing is coming is by recounting what they had, by being grateful for it. The memory sits inside him like a glass encased rose and he shelters it with pride, protects it with his life. 

The hardest to endure is the anniversary of it, to wonder offhandedly, if the reason he doesn’t see Jonny is because he’s with someone else. It’s rambunctious, it’s loud, it’s smothering, and the opposite of the peaceful feeling Patrick hangs onto from a year ago. 

When he goes to get air, to escape the noise, there Jonny is, like a mirage Patrick wished for. He’d look like he’s been sculpted by Donatello himself, standing there pensively under the moon, if not for the way his dark eyes swing Patrick’s, the way his his hard jaw tips towards him, as soon as he steps out onto the balcony. 

“What are you thinking about?” Patrick wonders. He squeezes in close, to be sure he’s real. Jonny gives him that same, soft yearning look that loosens everything in Patrick.

“What you’re thinking about.” Jonny says it infinitely easier than a year ago, so much so Patrick can’t help the joy that appears to dance out of him, that lights up his face like a disco ball. 

This time Jonny reaches out a hand and he’s tangible in a reassuring way. He melts under Patrick’s touch like he’s just as relaxed here, now, together, but he’s sure, sturdy, and real all the same. Patrick thinks if not for it, he’d float away, that it’s the single thing tethering him to Earth. 

That it’s the single thing tethering him to himself. 

  
  


**3.**

He’s gone months without, but the thing about autumn is it’s everything Patrick loves. It’s everyone hustling to establish routine, settling into place. The leaves change to vibrant, lively colors that backdrop hockey, and Chicago. He feels as delicate as a falling leaf, as crisp as the air that moves it, when October catches him—when Jonny catches him. 

It’s whimsical, really. He feels almost unlike himself, like he’s Cinderella, when he’s here with Jonny for tonight only. He imagines every fairytale he made his sisters watch with him and thinks: _This must be the moment. This must be the place._ Where the birds would chirp, where the music would start, where the sun would shine. That’s how it feels when he’s with Jonny. It feels like it’s too good to be true. It’s just so _good_ he can't believe it's true. He can't believe it's his.

Jonny opens up to him so easily, so invitingly. He accepts his touch and Patrick can’t help but drop kisses, soft little brushes, onto Jonny’s eyelids, onto each expanse of skin his lips can reach. He gives Jonny a kiss like coming home. Jonny’s almost entranced, malleable in this cocoon they’ve created. He chases Patrick’s lips when he pulls away from a kiss, not once, not twice, but three times and it startles a laugh from Patrick when he catches on and pulls off properly. 

“I got you.” Patrick pants, offhandedly, undressing them as efficiently as he can. 

“You do.” Jonny says quickly, dark eyes full of an unexpected conviction Patrick is defenceless against, and it feels like a vow. 

Patrick knows when this is over, this will be the moment he hangs onto until the next time.

**4.**

It’s normal afterwards, it always is. 

It’s normal for him to get caught up in the day to day and get lost there. Lost in the browns of Jonny’s eyes, lost trying to count the shades. He’ll compare it to the bark of the trees, to the dirt on the ground, the leaves falling between and think: Those eyes are all encompassing, they’re everywhere, they hold everything. Patrick knows, in a logical sort of way, that he’s probably seeing his own reflection, but he knows they hold him, too. If he’s honest with himself, they alway have.

It’s normal to fall into step with Jonny and get caught up in their routine: skate, eat, lounge, play, sleep, travel, repeat. It’s normal for him to share space with Jonny, to be where he is, closer than everyone else, and get lost in the memories of being even closer, of being able to trace the thin line of his irises when they’d threaten to disappear.

It’s normal that he gets caught up in how they were for maybe three hours across three years, and gets lost in trying to remember how he acted the rest of the time. How does he sit next to him anymore, how does he talk to him, how does he look at him? He gets lost in that worst of all. Lost in then, lost in now, lost in the fake future he wants, where he counts the steps until he closes the space, counts the breaths he’d take until he shares Jonny’s.

It’s like he’s watching a movie, disconnected from the world and immersed in just those three hours for what feels like forever. Every time he sits in it with the absolute knowledge that he didn’t like the ending, he didn't like the leaving. Every time he hopes he’ll watch it back and it’ll change. That’s the thing about movies though. They always end.

It never ceases to amaze him, how quiet and careful Jonny becomes when they get together like this. Patrick’s seen Jonny deke effortlessly, he’s seen him slow time during shootouts, but he’s never seen him like this. Jonny’s always so stoic, so calculated, but here Jonny’s just mellow, pliant. Here Jonny’s just his. 

“Always so red here,” Patrick admires, fingers flexing around the glass-like breakable tendons of his neck with amazement. He likes to think Jonny harbours his own red rose there. 

They’re tucked into a room up and away from the party. Patrick’s come to know tonight as a sub rosa place just for them. Where Jonny falls freely into him, hands roaming wherever he can, but they’ve never done this. Patrick’s sure he could write songs on Jonny’s cock in his mouth, he could write poems about Jonny’s hand on his own, but sinking inside him like _this_...It’s like he’s Patrick’s own little oasis. 

Jonny mirrors Patrick almost; when Patrick reaches to touch, he aligns to be touched. Then, Jonny reaches up to place a palm up to Patrick’s chest, where he’s sure his own rose lives.

There’s no other way to explain it than that Patrick feels special. He feels special to Jonny, to be the only one who’s ever had him like this. He’s so happy it bubbles out of him and when he kisses Jonny he thinks he could drown in him. He never would've guessed how deep this thing together went, but he’s perfectly okay to never find out, to simply sink. Right now, he doesn’t think there’s anything better than sinking.

When Jonny’s the first to go, with a guilty, ashamed paleness to his skin, then Patrick’s the one mirroring him. Patrick thinks he might very well be at rock bottom.

**5.**

Patrick feels like maybe he’s a rose himself, but the glass is cracking, and he’s wilting. Worst of all is seeing Jonny full-fledged and beautiful, while he misses him like a phantom limb. Sometimes, he can’t help watching Jonny. He’ll track the flush of his skin, the up-down of his chest, just to be sure at least one of them is safe and sound.

He thinks it’s over, that Jonny leaving, switching up their fragile routine, was a nail to the coffin. He’s pleasantly confused when Jonny seeks him out of the bar and into his arms. He’s beside himself with it, out of his wits with euphoria. This is all he wants. Jonny is all he wants.

It makes him scattered and unlike himself when he cries secrets into Jonny’s skin he’d never say sober, so as not to scare Jonny off with the severity in which he needs this, needs him. He tries to mark Jonny as his own so he doesn’t forget what they have, how valuable it is, when the morning comes like he’s wont to do. 

He thinks he tells Jonny he loves him, that he loves this. That’s how it feels crawling out of his heart and when Jonny doesn’t answer it sits on him like a scar of his own. He’d give anything to yank the words back down, to return to the depths of his soul where they live, where they’re celebrated—where his love for Jonny may very well be his soul itself.

He can’t. He can see it in Jonny’s eyes: There’s no going back from this. 

Patrick’s soul feels like shattered glass. He’s sure to grab all the pieces on his way out, if only because they’re Jonny-tinted. 

**\+ 1**

~~He tries to forget it himself.~~

~~He tries to forget himself.~~

~~He tries to forget it.~~

~~He tries to forget.~~

He tries. He knows he does. Patrick will remember one day what it was like before Jonny, before he got everything he wanted. What it was like when this was just enough, before he expanded to accommodate more. He almost wants to give what he’s taken from Jonny back to him, this piece of him that Patrick’s woven into himself and turned into them. He thinks maybe Jonny might not even want it. Patrick doesn’t ask, he doesn’t want to be right. So, he’s normal for Jonny, as best he can. It works, it always does. He stands back and soaks him in like the sun from the distance, like it’ll revive the rose inside him and it’s normal. 

*

Patrick doesn’t know why he does it, but when he sees Jonny’s absence at Brandon’s birthday it feels like he’s already been abandoned, feels like a bad omen. So when they need another round of drinks, Patrick gets them. Then he does again. Then again. 

After a while it’s just him and the thick fog in his mind dispersing into something easy that he can float in, that when he closes his eyes he can pretend is something to smile about. So he does. Easy. It’s easy. He’s trying.

“What are you smiling about?” Shawzy asks him, nudging his shoulder. 

“More like who.” Someone else chimes in. It’s not even a question to him. If they knew what he knew, he wonders what they’d say. He sits there in the booth with most of the boys, thinks of Jonny, and smiles—lest he cry. 

“Are you in _loooove_?” Sharpy laughs, in that perfect sort of way he does. Patrick’s smile drops. It hurts to hear back when he knows it’s one-sided, he wonders if this is how it sounded to Jonny because he knew it was, too. Patrick opens his eyes and he can see the laugh in Sharpy’s eyes too, dancing there. 

“Yeah.” Patrick says simply, quietly to himself more than anything. They’re all drunk, talking over each other, laughing, like it’s a joke, like it’s a game. No one will remember this in the morning but it’ll still be true. Patrick will still know.

Patrick orders them more drinks. He hopes he won’t remember either. He tries not to.

*

Patrick’s at the bar again, but he doesn't drink. He spent the time between then and now thinking of how to do this, how to talk about this. He spent the time between then and now thinking it’s a lose-lose situation whether he does or doesn't. Oh, but what if he wins? He thinks about that while he waits. He waits and he wants. 

And he waits. 

And he waits. 

And he waits. 

He’s still waiting when he gets kicked out, when they’re shutting down, when the party’s over. 

“Kaner, are you gonna be okay leaving alone?” Sharpy asks him, a second before he stumbles out of the door to wait for a cab, like he already knew he would. He’s getting into his own cab, hesitating like he might send Abby home so he can stay back and tuck Patrick in first.

“I always leave alone.” Patrick answers exasperatedly, followed by a hysteria-tinged laugh at how true it is. 

“Patrick.” Sharpy says, solemn and worried.

“Patrick.” He mimics back, annoyed. He shrugs it off. It’s not Sharpy’s fault he’s alone.

“I know you were—”

“What do you know? Patrick cuts him off, tired of this, tired of knowing. He almost wishes he wanted to unknow, but even where his heart cracks Jonny gushes out and it feels better than being hollow would. He knows that too. Patrick gives him a mock salute, walking away before he can say anything else.

*

He walks to Jonny’s before he can talk himself out of it. It’s not a long walk, but it’s not short either. Just enough that he can wonder why he didn’t show up, enough that he bounces from upset, to annoyed, to mad to worried. He’s upset and annoyed and mad and worried (for himself mostly) when he’s outside Jonny’s door and he hears noises. He almost turns around and leaves but he finds himself knocking. He has to know.

Jonny looks at him so soft and sweet when he opens the door, so fucking sweet like he always does. “What’re you doing?” He thinks of Jonny being like this for someone else and it makes Patrick’s stomach ache. 

He can’t wait anymore, goes searching for himself instead. He looks around and he doesn’t find anything. “Where were you?” He wonders to himself mostly, he’s confused about not finding anything. 

“What?” Jonny answers anyway. 

“Jonny.” He starts to say and stops. He doesn’t know why it feels like losing, that nothing kept Jonny home while Patrick was waiting for everything. So he asks again.

“Sharpy said you’re in love.” It’s not a reason, not really, but Patrick can’t wait anymore. If he doesn’t tell Jonny now, there’s no telling what would come next. He wants more than he can wait, and he wants so much he’s bursting with it. 

“I waited for you all night.” He admits. Jonny’s face clears, but the sweetness sticks. He doesn’t realize he’s getting closer until he’s close enough to notice the shade of brown in his eyes again. “For _you._ ” Patrick finds himself melting under the warm toffee color they are right now. 

Patrick thinks: _This must be the moment. This must be the place._ Where everything can go really, really wrong and the villain might end it all. Or it can all go really, really right and the hero can win and everything begins. He’s going to bite the apple and if it’s poison, if Jonny can’t wake him up, he would rather sleep. 

Jonny kisses him and Patrick feels like he can taste the toffee. He can—

He yawns. Before he can try to keep this for a little longer, he half hears, half feels “Stay.”

He could be wrong, he could be hearing what he wants, he could just be wanting again like he always does. 

Jonny coats Patrick’s worry in the warm assurance of his eyes, says “Love this.” It’s a sweet pour of caramel over him, so distinctly Jonny, he feels like a candy apple himself. 

It feels like the first night. It feels new and bright and _good_ — like a sunrise. It feels so normal, he thinks maybe _this_ is what he’s always known.

*

“I’m supposed to be yours.” He whispers it into the red centre of Jonny, where he’s sure his soul lives.

It's like he’s pressing the piece of them back where it belongs. Telling Jonny, tenderly showing him who he is, what he wants, after so long, and seeing him soak in the words with pride feels like it’s exactly what he was waiting for. 

**Author's Note:**

> tysm for reading!


End file.
